


An Interesting Anomoly

by thesignsofserbia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Great Hiatus, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, PTSD Sherlock, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Sherlock is a Mess, Sherlock is lonely, Sherlock's Past, You get the idea, kid sherlock (past)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesignsofserbia/pseuds/thesignsofserbia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was lonely. He’d realised this with a start, somewhere in Germany.<br/>He’d never been lonely, before the anomaly that is John Watson entered his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Interesting Anomoly

**Author's Note:**

> I am apparently incapable of writing anything other than Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock-centric stories. This is a short one, I apologise for nothing.

 

He was lonely. He’d realised this with a start, somewhere in Germany.

He’d never been lonely before, had never understood the preoccupation of the general masses with human interaction.

He’d lived a life predominantly in solitude. Mycroft was seven years his senior and they had very little in common. Mycroft had been a pompous arse for as long as he could remember, well, not quite.

They had been close once, but only when he was very young.

Mycroft had taught him how to store all of the overwhelming data, to stop it from hurting. He’d schooled him on how to detach oneself from feeling, to conceal his emotions and he had succeeded, mostly.

He spent his childhood on his own, in the library, the attic, wandering the estate gardens; finding specimens, investigating.

The other pupils at school didn’t like him, but that was alright, they were incredibly dull.

He learnt to fight at an early age, and fight well.

University, as it turned out, was not much more interesting, or difficult academically, than school had been.

He conducted many social experiments, learning to mimic accents and facial expressions, and for a while, there was Victor Trevor.

The endorphins and physical release of a partnership were gratifying, if messy. Mycroft wasn’t always right, he had experience, extensive experience even, but he had no need for the emotional attachment, and so, he returned to his solitary existence, and thought nothing of it.

He had always had his dark periods, when the world was pointless and summoning the energy to rise from the couch seemed and insurmountable task. Mummy and Father had been so afraid, the first time.

Sometimes he barely moved or talked for days.

Discovering drugs had helped with that for a while, but one can only maintain both a cocaine and heroin addiction for so long before it tears you apart.

But they were a far superior companion to anyone else he had encountered, save perhaps for his violin.

His brother attempted to intercede in his life on numerous occasions, without invitation, and the relationship was further soured. There were doctors, drugs –these ones acceptable apparently- and unbearable facilities, and, on one memorable occasion, a trip to Florida.

Greg Lestrade filled his life with new opportunities and eventually, a meaningful purpose. He was an acceptable acquaintance, but mostly just a useful colleague.

 

John Watson was an anomaly.

 

He greatly surprised him by being a conundrum, outwardly average and so painfully normal, yet somehow he also managed to be endlessly fascinating.

He expected that it would be temporary, he would need a short time to solve the puzzle of Captain John H. Watson, formally of the 5th Northumberland fusiliers and then he would continue life as he always had.

He genuinely shocked himself when he became aware of the fact that he actually wanted to convince John to agree to become his flatmate, more so when he wanted him to stay.

But what was the most perplexing, is that John Watson seemed to not only tolerate him (and his experiments…to a point), but to actually enjoy his company.

 

He was an enigma.

 

He found in John a flatmate, a doctor, a colleague, and relatively quickly; a friend.

Sherlock Holmes had never expected to have a friend.

They became Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson; partners in crime, not one without the other. He wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but John Watson became indispensable.

John was stabilising, he was Sherlock’s translator, his conscience, his intermediary with the world and above all; his conductor of light.

Sherlock came to care about him more than he had thought himself capable, he found himself becoming concerned for John’s safety, he felt chastised when John called him out when he was ‘a bit not good’ and he appreciated his assistance and expertise. Plus his introduction to the flat meant he no longer had to suffer the grocery shopping.

He started making concessions that he previously would have considered unthinkable; to pause working a case for John to consume at least 2 meals a day (he was grumpy on an empty stomach) and to sleep a minimum of 4 hours a night (in theory). Oddly enough John’s constant presence in the flat became a comfort instead of being unbearably irritating, and he found that he actually didn’t mind John’s nagging at all.

Sherlock Holmes came to value the life of another human being, as equal to, or indeed possibly above that of his own.

So when he was faced with an impossible choice; his life, or John’s, he didn’t hesitate.

 

He fell to his death.

 

The afterlife was awful, extremely overrated. Of course, he wasn’t technically dead, but at times he did wonder if it wouldn’t have made things easier if he were.

He had many names, in many countries, and although he extinguished more lives than he created, they hadn’t been very nice men anyway, so it wasn’t so much of a loss. John would disapprove, but John wasn’t there.

The time away took its toll however, it settled as heaviness upon his chest, as an ever expanding fog in his brain that caused him to lose words, lose time, and lose the game.

The loneliness had started to creep in at his grave, watching John turn around and walk away, and it throbbed, hurting a little more each day until he finally figured out what it was a few months later.

The loneliness was toxic, it grew with his smoking habit, and the collection of scars, seared and torn into his skin.

It made him want to waver in his resolve, to give in; he yearned to go home, to London and to John.

 

He’d never been homesick before in his life.

 

He was tired, exhausted, he’d been running for so long, and, god, he hurt.

He smoked his way through countless packets of cigarettes, blowing the smoke forlornly into the frigid nights and the humid afternoons. John would scold him, but he wasn’t there.

He showered with the lights off.  
If he had a mirror.  
If he had electricity.  
If he had running water.

As he ran long, thin fingers over the harsh, thick and raised areas of scar tissue littering his body, burns and lashes, gunshot and stab wounds, he wondered; what new man he would become, born from the blood of the corpses he left, someone ruthless and powerful, exhausted and lonely.

He had lost the game; the stakes too high

Moriarty had burnt the heart out of him, and skewered it, dragging him down into his muck.

He didn’t know how much of his heart was left, tattered and poisoned.

But John was a doctor.

John could fix him.

 

 

John wasn’t there.


End file.
